


three reasons benedick hobbes will never be a hero

by kwritten



Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 02:38:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2565215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>written <i>directly</i> after watching episode 52: “Hero’s Birthday” ; Benedick's thoughts during Claudio's "speech"</p>
            </blockquote>





	three reasons benedick hobbes will never be a hero

He goes back to watch the footage again and again.

Has a strange sense of satisfaction in watching his world crash around down his ears.

(Just standing in the background like always, like the asshole he is, like the dick he pretends not to be – taking this horrible moment and making it about him.)

 

_Reason number one why I’ll never be a hero: Too Selfish_

 

It was when he decided that he was really and truly in love with Beatrice Duke that he realized that he would never be cut out to be a hero like in any of those books and movies he likes so much. A small part of him liked to pretend that maybe there was still a possibility – that someday he’d find his movie, his script, his novel and there’d he be, in the perfect hat in the perfect spot with an umbrella under the moon under lamplight and the girl would appear and he’d put a hand under her elbow and smile down at her and she’d beam back at him and like that his story would begin. He’d stop being the joke at the end of the line, the one they indulge, the hanger-on, the clown. He’d stop being what he was and begin being who he is (and that beginning will be marked by a girl because that’s how all the good stories are written, he knows this).

Heroes fall in love with girls like Hero Duke.

They don’t fall in love with girls like Beatrice Duke. 

The cousin. The not-quite perfect one. The one that can still kick your ass at football. The one that doesn’t laugh at all your jokes because she’s always got a come-back that’s better. The one that holds you up to higher standards just by being slightly better than you deserve. The one that surprises you. The one that isn’t a princess or a damsel. ~~The one that probably a hero in her own right.~~

(The one that you never really thought was hot because she’s always wrinkling her nose at you or scowling at your bad jokes or making a self-deprecating comment and turning her head or moving too fast and then you catch her out of the corner of your eye one day and she takes your breath away and you wonder if you kissed her in the right spot if she’d feel her heart drop in the same way yours just did.) 

Girls can be the beginning and the end of a really good story. Benedick has always known this. He just never thought that falling in love with the wrong one would solidify his inability to be a hero.

A hero wouldn’t fall in love with a girl like that.

And Benedick couldn’t imagine falling in love with anyone else.

 

_Reason number two why I’ll never be a hero: Too Picky_

 

 

It is the strangest moment, the slightest moment, when you lose your hero once and for all.

Not that hero in the history books that you do your own research on and realize probably massacred a village in their spare time between being heroic and being world-changing.

The hero that betrays you the very most is the one you sit next to at lunch every day for years, the one you’ve seen with drool running down their face, the one you’ve let beat you at Monopoly, the ‘all-around good guy’ that makes you believe that if other people have friends half as decent as yours, the world might not be that bad. 

That hero. 

It’s the most painful betrayal.

Standing there, in a painfully normal dining room for a painfully normal event for a painfully perfect girl, Benedick Hobbes watched his heroes hurt and yell and push someone they proclaimed to love.

Standing there, he watched his brothers-at-arms, his comrades, his teammates, betray everything he always thought they stood for.

(In the footage, he laughs at his own head swiveling back and forth back and forth like a cartoon character and can’t look away because he needs to watch to remind himself.)

 

Sometimes the heroes, the good guys, walk away in one direction – 

 

– and the person they should be comforting walks in another.

 

 

Falling in love with Beatrice Duke wasn’t the first sign in Benedick Hobbe’s life that he wasn’t cut out to be a hero. It wasn’t the first. It surely wasn’t the last. 

And in the end it wasn’t even the most important.

 

 

~~_Reason number three while I’ll never be a hero: Because Fuck That_ ~~

 

 

Sometimes the good guys say the wrong thing and they leave chaos in their wake.  
Sometimes our heroes fuck a really good thing up.  
Sometimes the people you trust the most walk out the door to your left…

… and you turn right.

**Author's Note:**

> look, I knew ben/bea was coming because I know what I’m watching, okay? But I wasn’t sold on ben being *nearly* awesome enough for bea. He’s a cute/interesting teen boy – but there wasn’t anything spectacularly impressive or redeemable about him. Until he watched his dearest friends leave and followed bea/hero in the opposite direction. That was the moment when I thought for the first time that there might be a future for bea/ben. Not because I think he chose to follow BEATRICE out of the room – but because he chose to support HERO after Claudio’s onslaught (and Pedro’s betrayal, let’s be real). It was like that moment in HP: Stone when Neville raises his wand against his friends because he doesn’t want them making a mistake. This was Ben’s “Neville Moment” … and really, more characters people should aspire to have Neville Moments in their lives.


End file.
